In our first two articles in the DevOps track of Educational Foundations, we:
- Dispelled some DevOps misconceptions and presented our own principle-based definition of DevOps
- Presented the business case for DevOps, including the problems movements like Lean and Agile attempt to solve, as well as metrics from some of the latest research on high-performing DevOps organizations
In this article series, we’ll discuss the following three principle-based DevOps frameworks, below, as well as the common themes we can take from them to apply to your own DevOps transformation:
- The Three Ways as described in The Phoenix Project and The DevOps Handbook
- Mature capabilities in technical and management practices found in high-performing DevOps teams, based on the research presented in Accelerate
- The CALMS (Culture, Automation, Lean, Measurement, Sharing) framework for assessing DevOps
Framework #1: The Phoenix Project/DevOps Handbook’s Three Ways
If you’ve read either The Phoenix Project or The DevOps Handbook, you’ve been introduced to The Three Ways framework for DevOps:
- The First Way: Principles of Flow
- The Second Way: Principles of Feedback
- The Third Way: Principles of Continuous Learning
The First Way: Principles of Flow
The First Way is mostly concerned with accelerating the “flow” of work throughout a process. Gene Kim also refers to the First Way as Systems Thinking in his article The Three Ways: Principles Underpinning DevOps. Whether you’re calling it Flow or Systems Thinking, the principles underpinning the First Way are working toward the same end: viewing the flow of work as one continuous system (unsiloed) that can be continually refined and optimized.
Some of the key principles of the First Way are:
- Making work “visible”. Unlike manufacturing processes, which are easily observable on a plant floor, the flow of software through its development lifecycle is not easily seen. Using methods such as Kanban boards (Read more...)